Heretofore, in knitware such as body suits, brassieres, petticoats, and panties, patterning by jacquard pattern and press dyeing has been carried out in many cases by patterning of each body part. Such knitware has been produced by knitting knitted fabrics of great width with knitting machines having needle cylinders of large diameter, and cutting these fabrics according to the shapes of the knitware such as body suits, brassieres, petticoats, and panties. This has been done by cutting the shapes of the parts, such as the neck part, sleeve part, body part, leg-opening parts, and crotch parts, of each article, and sewing together the pieces of knitted fabric thus cut.
Consequently, because the parts, such as the neck part, sleeve part, body part, the leg opening parts, and the crotch parts, are fabricated by sewing from knitted fabric, the article as is composed as a whole of the same knitting texture the body parts.
Although the patterns produced by jacquard knitting and by press dyeing are the principal patterns for body parts, in practice there has been use together of two patterns of different character, such as composite patterns of spiral pattern having transparency, motif pattern of embroidery knitting, and composite pattern of tuck and knit miss, to produce a variegated design and enhance the fashionability and value of the product.
However, in the above described method of knitting body suits and the like, a process step of sewing together two knitted fabric pieces of the front and back at their two lateral sides is necessary in all cases, and this step is accompanied by the following problems.
(a). Much labor and time must be expended to sew the pieces together, and quantity (mass) production and reduction of labor are difficult.
(b). The front and back knitted fabric pieces are first made and are subsequently sewn together. Cutting, contracting, etc., of the knitted fabric gives rise to deviations in dimensions between the two sides, whereby pattern mismatching and/or shape mismatching occur after the parts are sewn together, and improving the product quality is difficult.
(c). In a body suit having a pattern over its entire surface, mismatching of the pattern occurs at the sewn seam part because of the sewing together, whereby matching requires skilled labor.
(d). Furthermore, as described hereinbefore, the various parts, such as the neck part, the sleeve part, the body part, the leg opening part, and the crotch part, are cut according to their respective sizes and body shapes and then sewn together. For this reason, the fabrication process becomes complicated.
(e). Another problem arises from the fact that the bust part and the crotch part are knitted in the same manner as the knitted texture of the entire body part. This does not provide for local moisture absorption and temperature insulation in a body suit or the like for women. Other knitted fabrics must be sewn together to compensate for this.
(f). For mock pile knitting (for knitting articles such as this kind of body suit, brassiere, petticoat, and panties), a machine in which pile sinkers of complicated form and a cam control device for controlling this have heretofore been proposed. However the construction is complicated, and assembly, adjustments, maintenance, and inspection are difficult.
The present invention has been made in view of the above described circumstances and has as an object thereof, in the fabrication of articles such as body suits, brassieres, petticoats, and panties, to enable knitting continuously over the entire structure of an article such as a body suit of variegated design without process steps of sewing together two pieces for the front and back along their two lateral sides; to enable garment length knitting of the neck part, sleeve part, body part, leg opening part, thigh part, etc., of a body suit or the like without depending on pile sinkers of complicated shape or a cam control device for controlling this; and, moreover, to enable stitch density adjustment while controlling feeding continuously or intermittently by ground yarn and elastic yarn singly or in composite state, by means of stitch density adjustment devices or yarn feeding devices, and to enable pile or mop pile knitting in a partial localized manner.